On today’s menu;
Zucchini, meadow mushrooms, red and green sweet basil and green onions, sautéed in olive oil at medium heat with eggs, a dash of light soy sauce, and sprinkled with a little sharp cheddar.
I cover it, turn off the heat, and go out to do the watering while it rests and let’s the cheese melt into it. When I come back in I smell the aroma of basil and the slightly anise-like mushrooms.
For desert is fresh blackberries and dried prunes.
It wouldn’t win any chef’s contest or anything like that, but this is food you cannot buy. Well, not unless your restaurant has a garden right out back. Anyway there’s something about stepping outside of a morning and gathering your breakfast that is satisfying beyond the “quality” of the food.
The wild mushrooms were a welcome surprise. They often come about this time of year, but it’s been so hot and dry that I really didn’t expect these. They’re considerably better than the similar, brown variety you get in the stores, but strangely you don’t see them produced commercially. They do stain yellow-ish when bruised. Maybe it’s all about looks on the shelf. I don’t know.
As I was picking ripe blackberries the other day, and stuffing handfuls of them in my mouth, I got the feeling that I was wasting them, by not sharing. Well plenty of them are going into the freezer.
Add your own eggs to make it perfection…
I have Khaki Campbell ducks. Quieter than the chickens, very good at feeding themselves, can turn them loose in the garden to control bugs, they lay an egg a day per duck… And the eggs are GREAT. Larger than chicken eggs , higher protein (and fat) too.
No kiddin’? We had some Khaki Campbell’s several years ago. Awesome eggs! When you scrub them up real well, they had a slightly translucent appearance and a subtle spiral texture to them. I called them “Spiral Pearl” eggs. We had so many we traded them to a local restaurant.
At some point, either a neighbor’s dog or a coyote managed to get into the pen and killed them. Just tore them up. Total loss. I’ve been a little reluctant to get more birds. I suppose your are right; it’s good to have your own, fresh supply. I’ll have to super-reinforce the structure and fence before I keep ‘yote bait again though.
Dug in hardware cloth 6″ deep all the way around, plus a layer of plastic coated chicken wire 2′ wide laid on the ground around the outside perimeter & grown into the grass, a wall of a heavy plastic coated mesh and a roof of 2″ heavy duty game bird mesh- A solar charged fencer with hot strands @ 18″ and 48″.
And a .22 Hornet.
Zero loss to critters so far-
Dang.